The Shining Aloha Spirit of Uncle Donna Kuali‘i

By Karen Valentine

It’s rare these days to find someone who is of 100 percent Hawaiian blood, and it’s a happy occasion to find one who is also full of 100 percent aloha.

With a smile that’s a mile wide, Uncle Donna Kuali‘i fits both criteria. Appropriately, he worked for Aloha Airlines—a career that spanned 32 years and took him around the world spreading aloha through his personality and native proficiency in Hawaiian music. Like many Aloha Airlines employees, he had two jobs at the same time. Uncle Donna was assistant manager of customer service for Aloha at Kona International Airport on Hawai‘i Island.

And, when the call came to drop his work and take to the road—or to the skies in this case—he was ready to go.

Stewardesses doubled as hula dancers, and porters picked up their ‘ukulele. During the ‘60s and ‘70s, attracting customers and passengers for the airlines was a much more personal, face-to-face, process than it is in today’s Internet-dominated world.

“It was fantastic,” says Uncle Donna, whose family heritage is in Waipi‘o Valley, although he grew up in Hilo. His father was also a musician.

“We got treated first class. They took good care of us. We traveled to all the 49 states and Japan. Every time I went, somebody else had to take my place. But they didn’t mind.” It was an opportunity for a lot of Hawai‘i-born young men and women to see the world while sharing the aloha spirit.

“Aloha Airlines was formed right after the war. For a long time, only Hawaiian was flying, and everybody was happy to see another airline,” says Uncle Donna.

He joined the airline in Hilo in 1953, and one year later was transferred to what is now the Old Kona Airport. They moved to the new Kona International Airport in 1970 as the tourism business was expanding.

“In order to get attention and passengers from the travel agents on the mainland we had to go out and do promotions. Some of the people there didn’t even know where Hawai‘i was, or even where Pearl Harbor was. Everybody quit working to watch us, with the girls dancing and everything. We would call for volunteers to come up and dance with the girls and everybody was happy,” he smiles. “The two airlines helped each other, and we did joint promotions with the big airlines like United, Continental, and Pan Am. They requested for us to go out there and help them.”

A 1977 story in Ha‘ilono Mele, a newsletter of the Hawaiian Music Foundation at UH-Hilo reads: “In hotel lobbies and airport lounges, people gather to watch and listen. In Buenos Aires or Atlantic City, a bit of authentic Hawaiiana has appeared. Mainlanders and foreigners alike, everyone loves it. It creates images of faraway places. Strangers always pause to appreciate. And the musicians and dancers are all natural hams.”

George M. Archer, Jr., Director of sales meetings and conventions for Aloha Airlines, was quoted as saying, “For Aloha Airlines, music is probably our biggest direct sales tool. We can sign up groups on the spot after giving them a bit of music. But also we know, as performers, we are always ambassadors for Hawai‘i…. It is a direct sales tool. We take our musicians to travel agent conferences, department store promotions, and various travel gatherings of all sorts. We intensify the desire to travel to Hawai‘i.… As we are able to bring the music to travel agents thousands of miles from Hawai‘i, so then the agents become knowledgeable and truly in spirit with all that Hawai‘i is.”

The 84-year-old Uncle Donna is the epitome of an ambassador of aloha. Married for 61 years to the equally charismatic Melvine Freitas, a Kona native, their family includes a daughter and two sons, all of whom live on Hawai‘i Island. They have passed that aloha quality on to their children. Everyone in Uncle Donna’s immediate family worked at Kona International Airport at some time. Melvine’s career includes 23 years working for Interisland Resorts at the Old Kona Inn and 24 years with Mauna Kea Resort. She was Mauna Kea’s official greeter at the airport. Son Donovan started the porter service there and son Kaleo worked with him as a baggage handler. Daughter Kanani worked at a rental car service desk.

A Mauna Kea Resort representative, Tobi Hoff, is quoted as saying, “Melvine has been an institution at Kona International Airport, a true and shining example of the old-fashioned Hawaiian hospitality of yesteryear, the kind that never goes out of style.”

Melvine, whose family is from Hōlualoa on the Kona side, and Donna, who played basketball for the champion Vikings team at Hilo High School, didn’t meet until both were on O‘ahu where they fell in love. After having been employed with HELCO in Hilo, Donna was doing electrical work for one year at Pearl Harbor and Melvine was in nursing school. Both returned to Hilo, where Melvine worked at Hilo Hospital. In 1954, they married and moved to Kailua-Kona, where Donna had been transferred by Aloha Airlines and Melvine got a job at the Kona Inn, beginning a career in the hotel hospitality industry that lasted nearly 50 years before she retired.

Uncle Donna’s musical touring activities actually began in 1956 with a European tour by Bunny Brown’s Hilo Hawaiians, a group of musicians from Hilo’s Haili Church. He was part of a troupe of seven that included four musicians and three hula dancers, organized to entertain U.S. Armed Forces troops stationed in Europe. In addition to entertaining the troops, they played for hospital patients and a group of escapees from Iron Curtain countries, visiting England, Scotland, Germany and France during the three-month tour, which ended at New York City’s Lexington Hotel’s Hawaiian Room.

Another opportunity to entertain troops arose during the Vietnam War, when Aloha Airlines received a letter from a helicopter squadron attached to the 25th Division from Schofield Barracks, asking permission to christen one of their choppers as “Aloha Airlines.”

“[An officer] wrote a letter to our president, Kenneth Char,” says Uncle Donna, “who answered and said they could have their aircraft named Aloha Airlines, but he also said we have a promotional team that they could use over there and entertain the boys. So the officer was shocked and surprised and said, ‘That’s terrific!’” Aloha sent a troupe of four musicians and three dancers for what turned out to be a whirlwind, 14-day Vietnam tour entertaining the troops at a number of locations around the country.

“When we got up there, all the squadron was all split up, so what we did was travel to every spot where the local boys were. They were all excited to see us. We could hear the bombs going off,” he says, and because of the potential risk, the musicians were all given officers’ titles in case anything happened to them.

At the same time Uncle Donna was working two jobs as airport assistant manager and entertainer, he served a total of 44 years as a reserve officer for the Kona division of the Hawai‘i Police Department, from 1957 until retiring in 2001. Since then, he continues to put in two days a week for the department in clerical work, volunteering under the RSVP, senior volunteers program. All of this service has been totally unpaid in financial terms.

“They didn’t have enough officers, so they created the Police Reserves,” says Uncle Donna. “Chief Anthony Paul started it. They picked up nine from Kona, and every district had nine. We went to Saturday classes in Hilo, where we trained at the same time as the regular officer recruits.”

“He has great people skills,” says Assistant Chief Paul Kealoha. Uncle Donna worked the midnight shift and eight-hour shifts on weekends, he says. “I had the pleasure of working with him back then on the streets. What he did best was his incredible communication skills with members of the community. He knew everybody and had an innate ability to deescalate situations, bring order, and keep people calm. He’s still part of the family and does entertainment for us free of charge.”

In 1985, Uncle Donna retired from Aloha Airlines and went to work for the Kona Hilton (now Royal Kona Resort) as doorman until 1997.

It’s clear he loves his community and his community loves him. He remains an active member of the Royal Order of Kamehameha I, Moku O Kona and is a past president and board member of Kai ‘Ōpua Canoe Club. He participated in the canoe club’s building of its large koa canoes and with the restoration of Ahu‘ena Heiau. He still performs in the Merrie Monarchs men’s chorus each month at Hulihe‘e Palace in Kailua-Kona.

In 2010, Uncle Donna Kuali‘i was recognized as a “Living Treasure of Kona” in a proclamation signed by the mayor.

A popular song by The Mana’o Company sings, “A-L-O-H-A, a little aloha in our day/spread a little aloha around the world.” It’s unlikely that anyone will ever do it better than Uncle Donna Kuali‘i.

Q: When/how did he start being called Uncle Donna?

A: His real name is Donna, and he doesnʻt know why he was named that.
Some people call him Don for short, and his school friends used to call him Kanani, however neither is his given name.

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